Собака

[alektoeumenides.livejournal.com]

Ok, so today in the office someone was giving out their email address and I remembered that Russians use the word "собака" for "@".

The question is, why? Can anyone explain it, or just give a good story for why? No one here could remember the explanations they'd been given.

Comments

[virtual-one.livejournal.com]

This sign looks like dog's tail :)

[rem-lj.livejournal.com]

No one knows exactly. :-)

For me, @ really looks like little dog with long curled tale :-)

[rem-lj.livejournal.com]

tail, sorry :-)

[kalaus.livejournal.com]

My guess is as good as any other, but I think this is from resemblance to "собачка",the little thingie on the doorlock that you slide to prevent the door from being opened with a key.

[viga.livejournal.com]

Существует много гипотез происхождения этого названия. Поиск правильной гипотезы осложняется тем, что кроме обозначения "собака" используются так же другие, например "обезьяна", "червяк"

1. Символ @ похож на спящую собаку, свернувшуюся калачиком (вид сверху). Так же похож на обезьяну с длинным загнутым хвостом. Про червяка, думаю, тоже все понятно.
2. По татарски, звук "эт" означает "собака". Вполне возможно, что впервые ее назвал так какойнибудь татарин-шутник.
3. Существовала древняя игрушка с псевдографикой под названием Adventure. Там у персонажа была собака, изображавшаяся символом @. Еще раньше была игрушка где этот символ изображал обезьяну.

Разумеется, это не полный перечень гипотез.

[aravir.livejournal.com]

Also масямба and крокозябла :-D But I can not explain this at all;-) Weird formations in language...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's OK to answer in Russian in this community, but you are expected to provide an English translation. This community is not for Russians who cannot write/speak Russian properly (for those, there is pishu_pravilno,) but for non-natives who learn Russian. This community's working language is English anyway.

[viga.livejournal.com]

There are many hypotheses of an origin of this name. Search of a correct hypothesis is complicated that except for a designation "dog" are used as others, for example "monkey", "worm".

1. The symbol is similar to the sleeping dog, curled up (top view). As it is similar to the monkey with the long bent tail. About a worm, I think, too all is clear.
2. On tatarski, the sound "at" is meant by "dog". It is quite possible, that for the first time she was named by the Tatar-joker.
3. There was an ancient computer game under name "Adventure". There the character had a dog represented by a @. There was a game even earlier where this symbol represented the monkey.

Certainly, it not the full list of hypotheses.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot :)

[virtual-one.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's called like "лягушка" (the frog).

[kart.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I didn't know about the Tatar meaning of "at/эт". Very interesting :)

Depending pronounciation though, wouldn't "at" mean "horse"?

[mooze.livejournal.com]

"At" in Kyrgyz (one of the turkic languages, related to Tatar) means "meat", "dog" in Kyrgyz would be "it"... FYIO...

[kart.livejournal.com]

Ahhaaa.. "at" and "et/it" must be two different words, then. Рахмет! (Спасибо!)

I knew that "ат" meant "horse" in Kazakh, Turkish and Tuvan. It seems like a fairly universal turkic word. Besides, horses are made of meat ;)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

well, horses and Turkish peoples just go together well :) Turkish peoples are The Riders, since the times of Koq Turk in 5th-7th centuries.

[mooze.livejournal.com]

there are some marginal differences in pronounciation of the key turkic words in various languages, but when one starts speaking it it becomes quite clear what's being said. Even though confusions do arise, it is not that hard to understand one another

[nemica.livejournal.com]

I've never heard @ to be called "обезьяна" or "червяк". Only "собака" and "собачка".
"Червяк" sounds really weird. :rolleyes:

It was funny when I tried to give my e-mail address to my Russian friend who'd lived in Boston and she just couldn't understand what I meant as I didn't know that @ called "at sign" then. She asked me, собака? какая собака? :)

the origin of this all @-meanings comes from very first days of PC's in Russia

[rottenshworz.livejournal.com]

This is a folklore dated by very beginning of 1990s.
The old joke by users for users.
For this days not too much people really know this jokes - this is a just a subcultural slang, after all.
You can't find this meaning of word "собака" in any official dictionary, this is it.
But still, it's quite popular, being mentioned even on tv and radio broadcasts.

[ex-yandex-ru640.livejournal.com]

my father is a programmer, was also a programmer in the USSR, and he told me, already in 1980-th, this sing looks like a head of spaniel or another dog with long ears. I should also say, it was a time, when @ simbol lookes a little bit another, then today - on EGA-monitors with very low resolution it was not so round, as today. It really looked as a dog-head, when you look at a dog from a side.

just try to start your PC in DOS-Mode and type @-symbol - you will see.

[simonff.livejournal.com]

My favorite term for this is "хрюква". Don't ask for explanations, as I don't have any. :) It just sounds funny.

[daphneisgood.livejournal.com]

Haha, I didn't know that Russians called it that! That's so cute. Anyway, I don't have an answer to the question, obviously.

[mooze.livejournal.com]

Do a Froogle search, maybe a Google expert would be able to find an answer:))

[thevoiceofnick.livejournal.com]

It's interesting, because the symbol has different names (with different meanings) in different cultures. All of the names probably came into being when the internet became popular. Before that, the symbol was probably refered to as "that little symbol above the '2'". I didn't even know what it was called until I started using e-mail in 1996, and i've been using computers since I was a child in the 1980s!

Anyways, in Spanish, they call it an "arroba", which means "entering" or "it enters". This is obviously a reference to the fact that the @ symbol connects the user's name to the domain it belongs to, or enters... similar to the English meaning of "at".

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

The correct Russian name of the @ sign (the technical word that means this sign since it exists in typing) is амперсанд. No one calls it this way though, maybe except some pros in printing industry...

[thevoiceofnick.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the English word "ampersand", which is the & symbol, not the @ symbol. Many people confuse the two.

[basile.livejournal.com]

амперсанд means "&". Official name for this sign is "коммерческое at" - "commarcial at".